


As Above, So Below

by tentacledicks



Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Biting, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Halloween, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Queering The Werewolf/Vampire Binary, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 20:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21259343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks
Summary: There's always a party on Samhain, and vampires know how to party better than anyone fucking else. It's why Jordi goes every year, no matter what else is happening, even if he's still kind of pissed off about getting thrown off a lighthouse last month. Whatever. Chicago is the last thing on his mind right now.But Chicago has a way of catching up to him...





	As Above, So Below

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for you Vin, because I bait-n-switched you and I know it. :)

The weather in Chicago was shit for the night, but since the ball was taking place in some picturesque fake castle in France, it’s not like that mattered. The moment Jordi stepped through the second set of doors in the otherwise incongruous abandoned house, the portal spell took hold, sweeping him across the sea and depositing him at the top of the stairs leading down to a ballroom already filled with people. He took a second to breathe in the mingled scents, tasting that particular green note associated most often with fae, then glanced up.

Vampires were funny creatures. In a way, they were a perfect mirror to their werewolf counterparts, a separate cursed witch bloodline that nevertheless followed a similar path. Bound to the bloodthirsty hunger that howled under skin, literally or figuratively, bound to the sacrifice that kept both their lines powerful as the centuries dragged on. Where most werewolves had hidden themselves away with the coming of the future, Jordi had embraced it. Not quite so eagerly as the vampires had, no, but he’d embraced it.

The similarities still showed in funny ways. Jordi was allergic to silver, wounded by it and burned by it, but he still showed up in mirrors and old photos. Vampires, on the other hand…

On the floor, the crowd was so thickly packed with dancing couples that the white marble was hidden by black velvet and red silk. On the ceiling, only a dozen figures spun, their angular fae faces absent of glamour and masks for once. Arrogant as they were, Jordi knew for a damn fact that the fae thought the mirrors around the castle were born of longing—that the vampires hoped for the day they’d be visible in them, that they invited the fae because they were so in awe of that power. It was why the stupid fuckers kept showing up to these balls.

Jordi knew better. Castle packed with mirrors was the perfect way to follow prey in a crowd of vampires.

The _ real _ question was which of the young new fangs would make a move tonight. The Samhain ball was when childer were debuted to the rest of vampire society, every sparkling new corpse eager to make its mark in the world of the undead. By this time next year, a solid ninety, maybe ninety-five percent would be chivied on to the second death—some by hunters, sure, but most by other vampires, annoyed and intolerant of these upstarts. That was the reason _ Jordi _ was always invited: werewolves were few and far between these days, and he was the best trial by fire they could ever dream of.

Any new fang stupid enough to take a swipe at him would be too stupid to maintain the lovely illusion the humans believed in. If he was lucky, Jordi would get to bite one tonight. That was always fun.

He sauntered down the stairs, nodding at the old Master of the castle, then turned his attention to the crowd. Like the rest of them, a delicate masquerade mask sat on his nose—a wolf, because he wasn’t a fucking philistine and knew when to seize the opportunity for a good joke—but he was a lone spot of white in a sea of red and black. His shirt and tie might be red as blood, but his suit? No, he wasn’t about to compromise his fashion sense for a fucking costume party. Besides, black was a vampire color. Unlike the fae, he had no reason to try and fit in.

It was getting looks, too. The fae, faintly condescending like always, as if they weren’t dying off in the world of iron and plastic. The new fangs, hungry and wary, trying to figure out if he was a treat or a trap. The old guard, who glanced at him and then away, most of them still young enough to remember the first time they’d tried to tussle with him. None of them approached, either wise to his tricks or smart enough to pay attention to the mood around him, but some of the new fangs were already edging closer.

Jordi grinned, his teeth sharp and gleaming, more points on them than two little fangs could match. Werewolf blood was addictive. Hunting vampires was _ easy_.

Now, which of them would approach first? Would it be the gorgeous blonde in the sweeping red ball gown, clearly made of cheap satin because she couldn’t afford the good stuff? Or the pretty twink in the tailored suit that was a hint too modern for most of the crowd? Maybe the wannabe goth that hadn’t learned to lay off the eyeliner now that he was dead? He marked all of them as he passed by, heading for the meager refreshments table—the Master knew him, and knew he got a kick out of the weird delicacies that were served every year, so it was bound to be exciting. The invitation had hinted at blood pudding, and it had been a while since Jordi had gotten a chance to eat that.

One of the new fangs brushed past him, bold enough to touch where everyone else was only looking, then paused. Jordi grinned, already flexing his fingers, wondering if he’d get to tear through more than one this night, his nails lengthening and sharpening into claws. This was going to be a _ good _ Samhain.

“Jordi?” said the new fang, in a voice that was familiar for all the wrong reasons.

He paused, flexing his fingers again, then turned to squint. Sure enough, Aiden was standing there, wearing a suit so dark an emerald that it looked black, even his collared shirt neatly pressed, dainty domino mask resting on his nose. It was the most put-together Aiden had ever fucking looked, his jaw clean shaven and his hair actually combed into something resembling order. And he was _ dead_.

“Pearce, what the fuck?” Jordi didn’t bother to keep the incredulity out of his voice, grabbing Aiden’s hand and turning it to examine the veins. Almost invisible, like every fucking new fang, though he knew those would darken with time—more importantly, there was no pulse in them, no thud of a heartbeat that should be there. The last time he’d seen Aiden, the dumb motherfucker was tossing him off a lighthouse.

That hadn’t even been a month ago. How the fuck had Aiden gone and killed himself in the meantime?

Aiden, for his part, looked like he’d been hit with the stupid truck. Not much different from his usual look, except that he had this hint of vulnerability in his eyes that vampires weren’t supposed to have. If he was fucking dead, he should have lost all that weakness already—killed the crushing empathy that drove him to such heights of rage the same way he’d killed everything else. Looking vulnerable meant looking weak. Looking weak meant looking dead, the permanent kind of dead, very quickly.

Jordi started to drag him out of the crowd, no longer getting any pleasure from the hungry (and now jealous) looks the baby vamps kept casting their way. Fucking idiot had gone and made himself a target, and unlike Jordi, Aiden wasn’t smart enough to win this kind of fight. Christ, he couldn’t be more than a couple weeks dead, his hand was almost living-warm in Jordi’s, the rough calluses of his fingers scraping against Jordi’s palm.

The banquet table _ did _ have blood pudding. He made a mental note to visit it later, casting a quick glance at the ceiling. Not because he thought he was wrong, just because… just because. Only his reflection showed, arm extended backwards like some awkward mimicry of a climactic regency scene, the blushing bride running from her wedding, old flame in hand. Fuck.

“Jordi, where are we—”

“Shut up,” he said without looking back, hauling Aiden down a hallway past rows of heavy ebony doors. Most of them were locked and soundproofed, holding the entertainment for the Master’s chosen favorites, but one had a gleaming brass handle instead of a silver one.

Jordi yanked that one open and shoved Aiden in, slamming it shut and locking it behind himself a second later. The floor and walls were bare of fabric, the heavy stone so finely worked that the seams between bricks were nearly invisible, and the brass fixtures in the walls had been lit at some point before his arrival. The Master was a good host, and he knew that Jordi liked to have a private room for himself.

Like most of the entertainment rooms, the furniture was minimal, but there was a massive four poster bed centered on the far wall. Like the rest of the rooms in the castle, this one had no windows. Good. Meant none of the other bloodsuckers could sneak their way in here.

“Jordi,” Aiden said, smoothing his hands over the wood of the bedframe, “what the _ hell_?”

“I should be asking you that,” he snapped, staring at the smooth line of Aiden’s jaw, the subtle _ wrongness _ in the lack of pulse at his throat. That fragility was back too now that Aiden’s hand wasn’t tangled in his own anymore, a slight hesitancy in every gesture. And the fucking suit was pissing him off. It looked good on Aiden, but it was so clearly someone else’s choice for him that Jordi wanted to shred it off and then give Aiden a strong nip for good measure.

“I—” For a couple seconds, Aiden’s mouth hung open uselessly, and then he sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, pressing his face into his hands. “I fucked up, Jordi. Did you know—what am I saying, obviously you know vampires are real. I uh, I killed one. So his sire took me in his place.”

“How in the fuck did you kill one?” Jordi asked incredulously. It wasn’t exactly _ easy _ to send a vampire on to the second death, not as a human. There was no way Aiden had done it by accident.

“Um. Bombs.”

There was one way Aiden had done it by accident.

With a groan, Jordi dragged his mask off his head and dropped it before moving forward to stand in front of Aiden’s hunched over form. His fingers kept twitching, the urge to form claws and rip apart everything that was upsetting him—Aiden included—making it hard to stay human, but he made the effort. For fuck’s sake. One of the few people he would’ve reliably called a friend before now, and Aiden was fucking _ dead_.

Dead and afraid of the consequences, because even without a pulse Aiden was trembling slightly. The suit was all wrong, the clean shave on his face was all wrong, the elegantly styled hair and the fear was _ all wrong_, someone else’s generic fantasy projected on Aiden’s dead frame. It had been less than a month since he’d last seen Aiden, but all the fire and resentment and rage had been stripped out of him, peeled off his skin like that ugly fucking jacket he always wore. 

“What’s his name?” Jordi asked, reaching forward to peel the stupid little domino mask off Aiden’s face.

“Maria d’Angelo.” There was a tight thread of misery in Aiden’s voice and he pushed his head into Jordi’s hand like a dog seeking out affection. New fang. This was probably the first time she’d let him out, and if Jordi was remembering his old oligarchs correctly, she was one of the key players up in New York these days. 

“You killed Lukas?” Blonde piece of shit hadn’t been worth the fucking clothes he wore, but Jordi hadn’t ever been invested enough to take care of that problem himself. Not a surprise he’d shown up on Aiden’s radar though. Vampires had food preferences like everyone else, and d’Angelo’s little harem boy had been a fucking freak. “Good riddance.”

The hollow, unhappy laugh Aiden made went straight to Jordi’s gut and dragged a near-silent growl out of him. His fangs lengthened, sharpened, made his gums itch with the desire to _ bite_, and given everything else about this fucked up little scenario, Jordi figured he’d indulge a bit. After all, the Master liked _ him_. They were two old souls, remnants of the first families that had borne the curse, enemies and lovers and rivals all in turn. She might be older than the usual corpses he disposed of, but there wasn’t a rule about which vampires Jordi was allowed to kill. 

Aiden had been his _ first_.

“She hasn’t let you feed off anything but her, has she?” Jordi dragged his palm over Aiden’s cheek, buried his fingers in Aiden’s hair and dragged his head back to make Aiden look up at him. There was that vulnerable look in his eyes again, but something close to wary interest as well.

“No. I haven’t earned it. And I’m too disobedient to be trusted alone right now.” A spark of anger lit, then dulled almost as quickly as it had come. “I’m probably not going to be let out for a while after letting you drag me away.”

“Mm,” Jordi hummed in disagreement, leaning in until their lips were almost brushing. “You’re going to stay right here, and not follow me.”

“Why?” Aiden asked, breathing in despite not needing it, his green eyes going dark as his pupils dilated. Poor little new fang, wouldn’t know what hit him when the scent of Jordi’s blood finally hit his predatory instincts. D’Angelo hadn’t been smart, taking some trumped up fledgling to a party like this. Had probably been looking for a reason to get Aiden killed so she could start a fight with someone else.

“Stay, and I’ll let you bite me when I get back.” He grinned at the hungry noise Aiden made, then pulled back. His mask was still on the floor and Jordi scooped it up as he unlocked the door, tugging it back on. Everyone knew it was him. But this was about _ style_.

The party was still in full swing as he stepped back into the ballroom, the Master lingering close to the hallway entrance. Funny enough, Maria d’Angelo was there too, kicking up a fuss about the _ honored guest _ stealing her fledgling away. She’d been to enough parties where Jordi initiated the first cull of the new fangs, she _ really _ ought to know better. Convenient that she didn’t, though.

There was a lovely black mask covering the top of her face, emeralds dangling from it, her dress as deep a green as Aiden’s suit. She was a beautiful woman, dead in her prime, and she wasn’t expecting it when Jordi grabbed her pretty little face and tore her jaw off.

Silence spilled out like oil in a sweeping circle around him, the dancing couples all coming to a standstill as they moved away from the violence. D’Angelo’s little cohort of conspirators and sycophants bunched up at the edge of the widening gap between Jordi and the rest of the dead, while the Master grinned and shoved his blackened hands into his pockets.

“You took something that belonged to me,” Jordi said, more for the audience than the struggling vampire in his hands. Her jaw rested a few feet away, tongue dangling grotesquely from the gaping hole left behind, and her sharp nails bit into the white silk of his suit to no effect.

“A territory dispute?” the Master said, disposing of the accent he usually put on for these parties. 

“Something like that. I know she’s a little older than my usual, but you don’t mind me leaving a pile of ash here, do you?” A low hiss erupted from d’Angelo’s cohort but Jordi ignored them in favor of the real power here. He’d _ really _ hate to be uninvited from these parties. The last time he and the Master had gone to war, he’d been stuck in the Americas for eighty years.

The Master considered it, his pointed ears and extended fangs almost comical as he tipped his head from side to side. After a long several seconds, while d’Angelo’s struggles grew more frantic and the rest of the corpses forgot to keep breathing, he said, “Sure, why not. It’s early in the evening, but you’re going to be in a private room after this, aren’t you?”

“That’s the plan,” Jordi said amiably, tightening his grip on d’Angelo’s tearful remains of a face.

“Such a shame,” the Master said, shaking his head. “You’re the only life of the party, Jordi.”

“I’ll make it up to you.” D’Angelo’s blood spilled in a black circle under his feet, staining his white suit and running in rivulets down her chest. Casually, with no hint that it was a struggle, Jordi twisted and pulled, feeling the way her skin and muscle tore under the pressure, hearing the sickening crunch of her spine cracking. With a final disgustingly wet noise, d’Angelo’s head separated from her body.

Seconds later, it crumbled to ash, the body following close behind. The black stains of her blood didn’t fade, but he’d just set this suit out in the sunlight tomorrow morning—that ought to take care of what drycleaning wouldn’t.

Silence reigned for a few heartbeats more. Quietly at first, the music in the ballroom started again, growing louder as Jordi made no move to slaughter everyone else. Slowly, warily, the clumps of dancers began to move with it, giving the stain on the ballroom floor a wide berth. He glanced at d’Angelo's cohort long enough to give them a nasty smile, then swept out of the room, past the Master who’d already lost interest.

To Aiden, who was waiting for him in the hall, white as a sheet.

“You were supposed to stay in the room,” Jordi said, irritated and pleased all at once. At least she hadn’t managed to crush his spirit, not properly.

“Is she dead?” he asked, looking lost. Confused. Adrift, without his sire’s bond to control and compel him.

Fucking bitch. Jordi grabbed Aiden’s hand again, dragging him back to the room whose door hung ajar. “She’s dead. Permanently, this time. Leaves you in kind of a pickle, actually, since you don’t have a sponsor to any of the courts or syndicates, and I’m sure as fuck not letting you go back to New York. Whatever. I’ve got pull in Chicago, no one will fuck with you there.”

“Wait—What do you mean by...” Aiden’s words trailed off, his bright eyes locking onto Jordi’s neck as he pulled the tie off. The fingers curled under Jordi’s hands twitched, all the anxiety and nerves falling off Aiden until the only thing left was the _ want_, so strong that Jordi could feel it. No more poor, sad new fang, only the hungry predator that every vampire was underneath the skin.

Good. With a smirk, he pulled the mask off too, using his free hand to start unbuttoning his shirt. Werewolf blood was addictive, but that was fine—Aiden had always been a fucking addict anyways, and it wasn’t like Jordi planned on leaving him high and dry. Besides, he’d always wanted a pet. And this way he could make sure the idiot couldn’t get himself killed again.

“You want something?” Jordi asked, dragging a finger down the line of his neck, watching the way Aiden’s pupils filled until his irises were the tiniest strip of green around the black.

“Yeah,” his new pet vampire whispered, lips parted slightly and the barest hint of fang showing underneath them.

“_Don’t _ stain my suit. I mean it. Spill a single fucking drop, and I’ll have it out of your hide.” He leaned back, finally releasing Aiden’s hand so he could have an easier time with the buttons. “Well?”

It didn’t take anything more than that, Aiden surging forward until the lukewarm length of his body pinned Jordi to the ebony wood of the door. His hands were frantic, clutching at the scarlet silk of Jordi’s shirt, fangs scraping the skin of Jordi’s throat before burying themselves in deep and—oh, fuck yes, _ there _ was the rush Jordi wanted, the sweet aphrodisiac of a vampire’s kiss. Pleasure or pain, they were built to make the victims _ want _ it.

He groaned, fisting one hand in Aiden’s hair just to hear the soft, eager noise he made in return. With d’Angelo out of the picture, this was some nameless, pointless little fledgling that needed a strong guiding hand. No other vampire would want the trouble, not after her death. Which meant Jordi could do whatever he fucking wanted with him now.

And this time, he wasn't letting Aiden out of his sight.


End file.
